Ciji Ware is a bestselling historical novelist, reporter, writer, lecturer, on-air host, and Emmy-award winning television producer. Perhaps best known as a commentator and personality for seventeen years on ABC Radio in Los Angeles, she has worked as an on-air talent for PBS in LA and all three major networks, covering a wide range of topics in the areas of health, consumer and lifestyle subjects. As a print journalist, her work has appeared in such national publications of Travel and Leisure, New West magazine, and AARP–print and online. Ware is also a sought-after event speaker and the author of six historical novels, as well as two nonfiction works, including Rightsizing Your Life –selected by the Wall Street Journal as one of the “Top 5 Books on Retirement” for 2007.
Ware comes from a long line of professional writers. Her late father, Harlan Ware, wrote the radio classic, “One Man’s Family,” as well as some 45 short stories for Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post magazines. He is also the author of the novel Come, Fill the Cup, which was made into a classic film noir starring James Cagney and Gig Young. Her uncle Darrell Ware was an Academy Award nominee for screenwriting, and her other uncle, Leon Ware, was an award-winning children’s book author. Ware’s ancestor William Ware wrote the historical novel Zenobia published in 1898, and Henry Ware, acting President of Harvard in the early 19th century, published scores of works on the subject of religion.
A holder of a degree in History from Harvard University, Ciji Ware was the first woman graduate of Harvard College to be president of the Harvard Alumni Association/Worldwide. She is the mother of a grown son, Jamie Ware Billett (Harvard ’95), a film and video editor and documentarian, and has been married for more than three decades to Internet marketing executive, Tony Cook. She and her husband and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Ensign Aubrey, live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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